TelecomWeb News Digest articles from October 2006

TelecomWeb News Digest archives from October 2006

GOP Slips Online Gambling Ban Into Port Act.
October 2, 2006... In what's regarded as a stunning sudden development, Republican legislators successfully slipped an online gambling prohibition amendment into a port security bill that leaders of the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives agreed to...

ITU Prepares Disaster-Management Roadmap.
October 2, 2006... The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is working with other international groups to develop an effective disaster-management roadmap for "information technology and communications" (ICT) service providers and other large users for...

OEN Offers FTTH Communities A Turnkey Package.
October 2, 2006... Earlier today at the FTTH Conference & Expo in Las Vegas, Optical Entertainment Network (OEN), which calls itself the leading provider of IPTV and IP broadband services optimized for fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), said its Sales Agent Program will...

Telenor Subsidiary Pushes DTT Transition.
October 2, 2006... A subsidiary of Norway telco Telenor signed a contract that will accelerate that country's transition from analog to digital television. Telenor Broadcast is teaming with Tandberg Television in a deal that has Tandberg providing...

Schwarzenegger Strong-Arms High-Profile Measures.
October 2, 2006... In a last-minute rush to meet a midnight Oct. 1 legislative deadline, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) vetoed a total of 72 bills while signing 110 other acts into law, including high-profile statewide video-franchising and...

New Research: Telecom Manufacturers Shift Focus To Growing SMBs.
October 2, 2006... A number of leading telephone system manufacturers are addressing the capacity and migration needs of growing businesses by adding newer and larger platforms to existing families of business telephony systems. Distributed work...

Eircom Gets Smart.
October 3, 2006... Citing $5.1 million in unpaid bills, Irish incumbent Eircom PLC has cut off outgoing telephone service to customers of its smaller rival Smart Telecom, leaving 40,000 Smart subscribers in the lurch. The latest event in the saga of Smart,...

SFR Buys Into Broadband.
October 3, 2006... France's Societe Francaise de Radiotelephone (SFR), becoming the latest wireless operator to acquire fixed assets as it looks to expand beyond its wireless roots, is purchasing the fixed and broadband businesses of Sweden's Tele2 for a price...

FCC Mirrors DoJ OK On Alltel/Midwest Divestitures.
October 3, 2006... The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved the asset/license transfers for Alltel's proposed $1.075 billion purchase of Midwest Wireless Holdings LLC with the same requirement to divest wireless assets in rural Minnesota as was...

Equant/HP Team Wins EC Broadband Upgrade Bid.
October 3, 2006... A partnership between Equant and Hewlett-Packard has won a massive $267 million contract from the European Commission (EC) to replace the broadband data communication infrastructures connecting various European agencies with new...

Broadcom Vs. Qualcomm: The Plot Thickens.
October 3, 2006... Irvine, Calif-based wireless device maker Broadcom says it's now taking several legal counter measures to fight Qualcomm in their complex, long-running, multi-venue patent dispute, emulating the back-and-forth battle Qualcomm and Nokia are...

Don't Get Mad, Get The Screamer.
October 3, 2006... Would you yell your head off if your cellphone or PDA went missing? Wait. There's an application that will do it for you. With expensive cellphones and PDAs becoming prized and easily concealable theft items, a new service launched by...

Update: Smart's Voice Subs Get Time To Switch.
October 4, 2006... Ireland's Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) last night said it had brokered a deal between ailing carrier Smart Telecom and Eircom PLC, under which Smart wireline subscribers will get the use of their phones back within 72...

BT Joins The Pepsi Generation.
October 4, 2006... BT's U.S. subsidiary BT Americas landed a seven-year managed-services agreement with PepsiCo - its second major managed-services win in the last month. BT declined to disclose the value of the deal, leading to the inevitable guessing...

Genband Buys Siemens' DCO Business.(Company overview)
October 4, 2006... Siemens Networks LLC sold its digital central office (DCO) circuit- switched business and all its accoutrements to Texas-based Genband. The deal also includes a license to other technology Siemens says will enable Genband to "provide open...

FTC Plans Tougher Telemarketing Rules.
October 4, 2006... The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that would create new limits and other regulations regarding the use of annoying prerecorded messages contained in telemarketing calls. The agency, in a...

AT&T Targets SMB Consulting Market.
October 4, 2006... AT&T is marketing a package of network, communications and information technology (IT) consulting services to the small and medium sized business (SMB) segment, extrapolating a number of the offerings from a similar portfolio previously...

Bell Labs Breaks The 100 Gb/s Barrier.
October 4, 2006... Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs has achieved the broadband equivalent of breaking the sound barrier, demonstrating what is the first reported transmission of 10 channels of 107 Gb/s data over 2,000 kilometers of fiber. That's the equivalent...

Lightbridge Exits Telecom Biz As Sprint Talks Fail.
October 5, 2006... Lightbridge's negotiations with Sprint Nextel, its largest remaining telecom customer, to extend the current deal between the two have collapsed. As a result, Lightbridge is getting out of the telecom-decisioning-services (TDS) business. ...

Criminal Charges Filed In HP Pretexting Scandal.
October 5, 2006... California law enforcement has issued warrants and has filed felony charges against ousted Hewlett-Packard Chair Patricia C. Dunn and four other individuals regarding the company's use of fraudulent means to gain telephone- call data and other...

U.S. Court Allows Warrantless NSA Surveillance To Continue.
October 5, 2006... The National Security Agency (NSA) phone-call and e-mail eavesdropping operation will continue indefinitely as the federal government appeals a lower court ruling that the activity is unconstitutional and should stop (TelecomWeb news break,...

FTTH Council Defines 'FTTH'.
October 5, 2006... The Fiber to the Home (FTTH) Councils of Asia Pacific, Europe and North America -- complaining that confusion is setting in because of differing use of various industry terms around the world -- have taken the wraps off a small dictionary...

Orange Targets Multinationals With Mobile Mail.
October 5, 2006... Orange Business Services - the new umbrella operation for what had been a multiplicity of operating units owned by France Telecom - today launched a managed mobile-push-mail solution aimed at multinational companies. The service, built...

Homeland Security, Teleworking Drive New Federal Telecom Spending.
October 5, 2006... Federal telecommunications spending during the next five years is expected to see a compound annual growth rate of 5 percent, starting from more than $17 billion in fiscal year 2006 (FY06) and reaching nearly $22 billion by fiscal year 2011...

T-Mobile USA Unveils Massive 3G Plan.
October 6, 2006... Deutsche Telekom's (DT) U.S. cellular subsidiary T-Mobile USA this morning took the wraps off an ambitious $2.64 billion 3G network rollout, with work on the project to begin almost immediately as T-Mobile scurries to catch up with its...

U.S. FTTH Hookups Top The Magic Million.
October 6, 2006... The number of American homes connected to fiber (FTTH) has topped the one-million mark for the first time, according to new statistics compiled by research house RVA Market Research. The new figures, presented yesterday at the FTTH...

DoJ Quiet As FCC Readies AT&T/BellSouth Decision.
October 6, 2006... Amid reports that the U.S. government is set to approve AT&T's proposal to buy BellSouth for $67.1 billion with minimal or no conditions (Telecom Policy Report, Sept. 23), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has put the merger item...

Telstra Cuts Over Mobile Broadband.
October 6, 2006... Earlier today, Telstra switched on its new $745 million 3G mobile broadband network. The network, which it is calling "NEXT G," was built in just 10 months, with Ericsson as the primary equipment supplier. According to Telstra, NEXT G is...

Tarifica Head Tapped For ITU Appearance.
October 6, 2006... Next week, John Lilley, publisher of TelecomWeb news break's sister e- letter Tarifica Alert and head of sister division Tarifica in the U.K., will address International Telecommunication Union (ITU) delegates on key tariff- definition issues...

More Criminal Charges Possible In HP Scandal.
October 6, 2006... As former Hewlett-Packard insiders voluntarily turned themselves in following criminal charges in the company's pretexting telephone call scandal (TelecomWeb news break, Oct. 5), reports surfaced that California law- enforcement authorities...

Smart Telecom Sells For One Euro.
October 9, 2006... Ireland's troubled Smart Telecom has been sold to the company's major investor for a symbolic one euro. The deal keeps the company alive, at least for now, although voice subscribers still have only two weeks to find a new carrier because...

FET Refund Hassles Are Alive And Well.
October 9, 2006... The now-deceased federal excise tax (FET) on long-distance telephony caused controversy during its 108-year-old life, but it continues to spook businesses and consumers looking for the refunds promised by the U.S. Department of the Treasury...

Ericsson Tops Bids For Massive India GSM Upgrade.
October 9, 2006... Sweden's Ericsson has emerged as the top bidder in a massive - and unexpectedly controversial - 63.4-million-line GSM expansion by India's state- owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) that now looks like it will cost just shy of $7 billion....

FastWeb, Sky Team For Italian Triple Play.
October 9, 2006... Italian direct-to-home (DTH) satellite operator Sky Italia and broadband provider FastWeb inked a pact under which all of Sky's content will be available to FastWeb subscribers over IPTV. Meanwhile, Sky will offer its subscribers broadband...

Survey Sez: Americans Continue To Cut The Cord.
October 9, 2006... Nearly 75 percent of U.S. adults say they currently subscribe to some sort of wireless service, while only 58 percent say they have a hardwired service in their homes. Overall, approximately 13 percent of U.S. adults use only a cellphone or...

ADT Asks FCC To Keep Analog Going...For Awhile.
October 9, 2006... Even though the switchover from analog to digital TV here in the states isn't scheduled for another two years, ADT Security Services Inc., a unit of Tyco Fire & Security, is asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to extend the...

AT&T Cracks India's Long-Distance Market.
October 10, 2006... AT&T has become the first foreign company to win permission to set up shop as a long-distance carrier in India, providing both international long- distance and long distance within India itself. Its target is the corporate enterprise market....

Live From CompTel: The Secret to Lobbying 101 -'Keep It Simple'.
October 10, 2006... The head of Paetec Communications yesterday told attendees at the Competitive Telecommunications Association (CompTel) Fall 2006 conference and exposition in Orlando that the group and its members must simplify and narrow their efforts to...

Sonae Pinches Pennies In PT Takeover Battle.
October 10, 2006... Sonae and its Sonaecom subsidiary are trimming their hostile-takeover bid for Portugal Telecom (PT) by 11 cents per share in one of the more obscure moves in the vicious takeover battle that has now dragged on since February. The reduced...

Alcatel Wires Telefonica Latin America For IPTV.
October 10, 2006... Telefonica, so far one of the most advanced telcos in Europe in terms of IPTV services, has selected Alcatel for a key end-to-end network transformation project in Latin America that is expected to add IPTV to its operations on that...

BT Gets 'Motive'-ated.
October 10, 2006... Broadband-management software house Motive landed BT subsidiary BT Retail as a customer - a showcase win under which BT is deploying Motive's Home Device Manager (HDM) as part of its high-profile rollout of IPTV in the U.K. later this year....

China, India Will Drive Cameraphone Market By 2010.
October 10, 2006... Smile for (and talk to) the birdie. New research says the installed base of cameraphones in the Asia-Pacific region will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 21.9 percent for the next 4 years, topping 600 million cameraphones in 2010....

DoJ Vets AT&T/BellSouth Deal; FCC To Follow?
October 11, 2006... Now that the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has given its public blessing to the proposed merger of the former Ma Bell and her daughter, will the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) act in kind at tomorrow's open meeting? Placed on...

Carphone Ends AOL's European Aspirations.
October 11, 2006... Carphone Warehouse plunked down $688.91 million to buy Time Warner's AOL Internet access business in the U.K. - an acquisition that signals the end of AOL's once-grand illusion that it could dominate the world with its Internet service. ...

Live From CompTel: Nextlink In Reseller Thrust As XO Expands.
October 11, 2006... Nextlink Wireless is starting a new reseller program for carrier partners using its licensed spectrum capacity in an ongoing effort to position RF technology as an end-user alternative to wireline access and local loops as sister company XO...

TNZ Sets Analog Cutoff As Lucent Rolls Out High-Speed Wireless.
October 11, 2006... Earlier today, Telecom New Zealand (TNZ) said it's going to shut down its aging analog cellular system March 31, 2007, after more than 20 years of service. At the same time, the carrier is said to be on schedule for the launch upgrade of its...

Free Wireless Promised As Singapore Becomes Island Hot Spot.
October 11, 2006... The Government of Singapore last night unveiled details of a plan called "WirelessSG" under which the entire island nation will, in effect, be turned into one giant hot spot. Residents will get free-for-all wireless Internet access for at...

DoD Crafts Single Army/Air Force Wireless Contracts.
October 11, 2006... In what the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) says is a "major initiative to cut costs and improve efficiency," the Air Force's and the Army's acquisition and IT executives contracted with the Censeo Consulting Group to help them develop a...

EC Charges 13 Countries With Telecom Rule Violations.
October 12, 2006... The European Commission (EC) has filed charges against 13 countries - including nine new cases and eight that have been escalated - for violations of a wide range of EC telecom regulations. The most common charge was failure of countries...

Dingell to FCC: Don't Rubber-Stamp AT&T/BellSouth Merger.
October 12, 2006... A key Democratic congressman has made what amounts to a last-ditch appeal that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) avoid rubber-stamping yesterday's U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) imprimatur on the AT&T $67.1 billion proposal to...

Vodafone Inks New U.K. High Street Deal.
October 12, 2006... Vodafone, in a deal it hopes will boost its retail profits in the U.K., named Phones4U as the exclusive third-party retailer for Vodafone contract customers, rival Carphone Warehouse. The move set off yet another major wave in the U.K....

FCC Ponders How To Fill Up 'White Spaces'.
October 12, 2006... The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today unanimously took several first-step actions, including the partial grant of a Qualcomm petition, to start considering new broadband, video and other potential uses of the 700 MHz analog RF...

CompTIA Readies World's First IT Certification.
October 12, 2006... The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) today went into beta test of a new certification program designed to test the ability of IT workers to deal with converged communications technologies. The new certification, to be...

Mongolia TV Viewers Go Wireless.
October 12, 2006... A few select couch potatoes in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, are watching wireless digital TV in their homes, courtesy of Yangtze Telecom Corp., following a month-long trial of signal quality. Ulan Bator, formerly Urga, city in north central...

U.S. Investors Grab A Chunk Of Idea Cellular.
October 13, 2006... Investment house Providence Equity Partners picked up a 16-percent stake in India's Idea Cellular Ltd., the fifth largest cellular carrier in that country, for $400 million. The Aditya Birla conglomerate, which owns 98.3 percent of Idea,...

BPL Newcomer Eyes Rural Markets.
October 13, 2006... Partially diluting the policy-maker contention that broadband over power line (BPL) contenders could emerge as major Internet-access "third pipe" competitors against the existing telco/cableco duopoly, the head of a recently formed BPL entry...

Mega-Merger Opponent Tells Court 'Told You So'.
October 13, 2006... One of the competitive-carrier groups intervening in the federal-court review of last year's SBC Communications/AT&T and Verizon Communications/MCI "mega mergers" pointed to the recent U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) unconditional green...

U.K's PlusNet On The Block; Is BT Bidding?
October 13, 2006... BT today was named in the U.K. press as the company making a play for Yorkshire-based national broadband provider PlusNet. In a London Stock Exchange filing late yesterday, PlusNet confirmed receiving a bid approach, but it did not say...

Rumored Tower Sale Caps Week Of Mega-Mergers.
October 13, 2006... The Blackstone Group put its cellular tower operation, Global Tower Partners, up for sale, according to widely repeated rumors in the industry this morning. Reportedly, Blackstone has hired Morgan Stanley to find a buyer for Global Tower,...

Live From DigitalLife: Where Was Wireless?
October 13, 2006... The wireless presence at this year's pre-holiday DigitalLife gadget-fest in New York City was underwhelming at best and a bit disconcerting at worst...at least if you were looking for signs of convergence. According to Steve Smith,...

FCC Airs Surprise AT&T/BellSouth 'Concessions'.
October 16, 2006... In the wake of putting off its vote on the proposed AT&T/BellSouth $67.1 billion merger (TelecomWeb news break, Oct. 13), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) late Friday opened up for public scrutiny a series of conditions and...

Tempest In A Teapot: Rivals Fight For Rural Telco.
October 16, 2006... FairPoint Communications has won an acrimonious, although little-noticed, bidding battle to take over The Germantown Independent Telephone Company (GITC), a tiny, 106-year-old, single-exchange rural incumbent local exchange carrier located...

India Gets Gift-Wrapped IPTV.
October 16, 2006... India's population is about to get a high-tech present for Diwali, the Hindu "Festival of Lights:" the first IPTV offering in that nation. State-owned India phone company Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL), in partnership with...

Sprint Nextel Wins Stay Of Midwest Divestiture Order.
October 16, 2006... The Illinois Court of Appeals last Friday granted Sprint Nextel's request for a stay of a lower-court bench ruling saying the wireless company must divest select Midwest wireless licenses, operations and assets in the sales/marketing...

Belgacom Completes Share Buyback, Promises Dividends.
October 16, 2006... Last week, Belgacom completed a buyback, announced in late summer, of $250.34 million worth of its shares, and it now says it will pay an interim dividend totaling $125.17 million to stockholders later this year. Belgacom repurchased...

How To Talk Your Way To Free Plane Tickets.
October 16, 2006... Not only will cellphoners soon be able to talk on the plane, they will be able to talk their way onto the plane. Web-based wireless-services marketer InPhonic Inc. has launched SkyMiles Wireless, what it claims is the first-ever program...

Level 3 Bags Broadwing As Buying Spree Continues.
October 17, 2006... Level 3 Communications will purchase rival Broadwing for $1.4 billion in cash and stock, the latest acquisition in its multi-billion-dollar buying spree as it continues to strengthen its already formidable position in the wholesale bandwidth...

Broadband Outage Leaves Orange Red-Faced.
October 17, 2006... An estimated 160,000 Orange U.K. broadband subscribers lost their service at about 4 p.m. London time on Monday in a major outage that continued as of TelecomWeb news break press time, more than 24 hours later. The outage appears to have...

AT&T Adds Net Neutrality Promise To BellSouth Deal.
October 17, 2006... Network-neutrality advocates may have seen a small but symbolic victory as AT&T added a promise of adherence to the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) open Internet principles as part of the condition/concession package aimed at...

NEC Drags SIAE Into Milan Patent Court.
October 17, 2006... Japan's NEC Corporation (NEC) filed patent-infringement charges against digital microwave radio (DMR) manufacturer SIAE Microelettronica S.p.A. (SIAE) on the Italian company's home turf in Milan, following similar litigation pending in...

Vodafone Unveils 3G-Based Holiday Battle Plan.
October 17, 2006... Vodafone, revealing details of its new handset lineup as it looks to make a splash in the U.K. pre-holiday market, has made it clear mobile entertainment is at the heart of its handset strategy. The pre-holiday market is likely to be...

Bahrain Officials Name Bid-Vetting Panel.
October 17, 2006... The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) of the Kingdom of Bahrain tapped a number of experts to re-evaluate any unsuccessful bids submitted prior to the auction of two National Fixed Wireless Services (NFWS) licenses that will close...

Wanted: Recruits For Emergency Communications Panel.
October 18, 2006... The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is seeking nominations for membership on a new advisory panel for wireless-oriented emergency communications mandated by a port security bill signed into law by President George Bush last Friday...

Rumor Du Jour: Is The Axe About To Fall At TNZ?
October 18, 2006... Nerves are on edge down under following reports that as much as 10 percent of the staff at Telecom New Zealand (TNZ) will be laid off - possibly by Christmas. The layoffs are being blamed in large part on the competition expected to...

Has US Wireless Online Finally Found A Suitor?
October 18, 2006... Wireless ISP (WISP) US Wireless Online (USWO) looks like it may have found a buyer after months of looking. The company has entered into a non-binding letter of intent to sell a majority equity interest to VoIP and business broadband...

The Irish Get A Look At TinyTV.
October 18, 2006... A handful of users in Ireland soon will be able to sample the alleged delights of mobile television - TV on the tiny screen or TinyTV, if you will - as cellular carrier O2 launches the country's first mobile trial using Digital Video...

AT&T/MetroFi Team Wins Another Massive Muni Mesh.
October 18, 2006... The Riverside, Calif., City Council inked a five-year agreement with AT&T and MetroFi Inc. that has the pair building and operating a municipal broadband system that ultimately will cover more than 80 square miles. The city government...

Survey Sez: Frisco Slowest To Cut The Cord.
October 18, 2006... More and more U.S. households are dropping their landlines and are opting to go completely wireless, research firm Telephia says, but San Francisco stubbornly is holding on to its hardwired handsets. Telephia says households in Detroit...

Cingular Profits Soar On Surprise Subscriber Growth.
October 19, 2006... Cingular has ratcheted its bottom-line profits - up 280 percent to $847 million for the quarter ended Sept. 30 - on an unexpectedly strong 1.4 million surge in the total subscriber base coupled with low churn. The largest U.S. cellular...

Rumor Du Jour: Is Go Going?
October 19, 2006... Reports out of Israel suggest hot wireless broadband startup Go Networks is in preliminary talks to be acquired, with a rumored price tag of $60 million. Such a price would yield a handsome profit for the investors who put a little more...

Verizon Still Digging Out Of Buffalo Snow Storm.
October 19, 2006... Verizon Communications hasn't gotten cold feet but it has had to do a lot of shoveling to dig out of last week's freak autumn storm that dumped a record of almost two feet of snow and that brought below-normal frigid temperatures to Buffalo,...

Telecom Italia OK'd To Sell Brazilian Assets.
October 19, 2006... Brazil's telecom regulatory agency has given Telecom Italia (TI) permission to separate its telecom assets in that country and to eventually sell one of the holdings. This is being seen as an effort by the Brazilian government to shield...

Ericsson Unveils Another Win As Profits Surge.
October 19, 2006... Swedish manufacturing giant Ericsson celebrated a quarterly report showing profits up a healthy 17 percent year-over-year on a 12-percent boost in sales by unveiling a $230 million order from Australia's Telstra to upgrade the operator's...

Alphabet Soup: SITA Offers ATI Mobile VoIP.
October 19, 2006... According to one estimate, the air-transport industry (ATI) is spending "billions of dollars" a year on fixed and mobile telephony services. A Swiss company now says it can save the wireless day with a mobile Voice over Internet Protocol...